This Month's Special

Monday, May 18, 2015

Tour Kick Off: Reaper by Kristi R. Johnson

Young Adult

Date Published: February 12, 2015

Ana "Reaper" Keating has moved onto the Hugo Liberal Arts College campus, forty minutes away from her hometown. Dorm life will be incredibly different from her life in the cave at the quarry. Not only will there be reliable air conditioning and a roommate, but Reaper also believes she will no longer be threatened by the powerful and wealthy Goldwater family that adopted her mother, Sue, when she was a child. Neither Reaper nor her father, Jim, like to talk about Sue's death. And Mr. Paul, the Goldwater patriarch, still blames Jim for what happened 16 years ago. When Reaper learns that Mr. Paul's son, Ian, has also enrolled at HuLAC, she realizes that her days of dealing with the entitled and vengeful family are nowhere near over. It is Jim's worst nightmare, but it also what he has been preparing Reaper for all of her life.

#1 – Do You See Writing as a Career? Writing certainly can be a career, but I currently have two other
jobs, and a third one might kill me. Plus, even if I did have the kind of sales
numbers that allowed me to quit my day job(s) and write full-time, I would
still probably work, because I like what I do, in both places. I currently work
at a university as an admin, and at another one as a writing consultant for the
writing center. There ae certainly days where I would love to give it all up
and do what I want, but for the most part, I like working.

#2 – What was the Hardest Part of Your Writing Process? For me, the hardest part of the writing process is just
sitting down and getting the words out, especially at the beginning. That is
why I found National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to be so helpful. The
first 50,000 or so words of Reaper
were written during the 2013 NaNoWriMo. From there, all I had to do was finish
up and then do some heavy editing before submission. What’s nice about
NaNoWriMo is that it discourages editing while writing, which can slow a lot of
writers down.

#3 – Did you have any One Person Who Helped You Out with
Your Writing Outside of Your Family? I wouldn’t say
there was any one person who helped me, but I definitely had a lot of
encouragement from close friends. Two of them, Josh and Suzanne, I actually
mentioned in the acknowledgements of my book and gave special thanks. Suzanne
served as my editor for a ridiculously low price, and Josh is just always great
to talk to and bounce ideas off of.

#4 – What is next for your writing? I
am currently working on another story that I began during the 2014 NaNoWriMo.
This one probably won’t end up as dark as Reaper,
and it takes place in high school as opposed to college. But it is still set in
a small town, and the main character is struggling to come to terms with being
the only black person in the entire school.

#5 – Do you have an addiction to reading as well as writing?
If so, what are you currently reading? Oh my
goodness, yes. I even have my own book blog as proof (www.doorstopnovels.blogspot.com).
I am currently reading Twisted by
Marjorie Brody. Marjorie and I are actually part of the same writing group, The
San Antonio Writer’s Guild. It is a wonderful group of people and another
supporting force that helped me get back into writing for fun after grad
school.

DESCRIBE Your Book in 1 Tweet: The
day her dad prepared her for has arrived.

This or That?

#1 - iPd or Mp3? iPod. I have an
iPhone so I like having my phone and music all in one device.

#2 – Chocolate or Vanilla? This
is tough, but I will go with vanilla. Either one is fine, but I do find myself
choosing vanilla more often.

#3 – Mashed Potatoes or French Fries? French fries. Again, both are good, but given a choice, I
go with fries.

#4 – Comedy or Drama? Comedy. In
life in general when the option is to laugh or cry, I choose laugh every time.

#5 – Danielle Steel or Nicholas Sparks? Nicholas Sparks. To be fair, I have never read a Danielle
Steel novel, so I am not sure how fair my answer is.

#6 – Fantasy or Reality? Reality.
Things that happen in real life can be pretty strange.

#7 – Call or Text? Text. I am
not a big fan of talking on the phone…or in person for that matter.
Conversation in general can exhaust me, and I have always been better with
written communication.

#8 – Public School or Home School? Public.
I get why people sometimes choose homeschooling for their kids, but I am a
product of public education and I think it is just fine.

#9 – Coffee or Hot Chocolate Hot
chocolate. I’m not a coffee drinker.

#10 – eBook or Paperback? Paperback.
I like physical books. For some the experience is the same with either format,
but not for me. I like cover art, typeface, even the binding. I may be running
out of space in my apartment due to the amount of books I buy, but I have no
plans at this point to buy an e-reader.

Kristi R. Johnson is the creator and primary contributor to the book blog Door Stop Novels. Kristi currently works at the University of Texas at San Antonio as a Senior Admin, and part-time at Our Lady of the Lake University as a Writing Consultant. Kristi writes and reads whenever she can, and plans to keep reading, writing, and traveling as priorities in her life, always returning to her home in downtown San Antonio, which is little more than a treehouse with air-conditioning.

Reaper is her first full-length novel, the first 50,000 words of which she cranked out during National Novel Writing Month 2013.